Let me first say thank you for taking the time to develop this awesome script for Firefox it really makes using poopli with IVSm a breeze.

My question is in regards to the possibility of having the script/extension display the content and activity of the "virtual replay" downloads. I use this feature quite a bit and would love to see their progress in the poopli IVS transfers enhancements of this script/extension.

Version 0.10 is a pretty minor release, so don't get too excited. The things of interest:
- Incorporates Bob's code changes to handle parsing the current version's HTML.
- Adds support for pause/unpause, and also allows you to show/hide the pause and deny buttons in the preferences panel. (Changes by berkland from a long time ago.)

The main reason I did this was to make sure we had all the latest code from everyone who has contributed. I do want to continue development on this, but I don't have a way to make time for this right now, so don't get too excited.

The main areas of work, which are in somewhere about half done waiting for time:
- Convert to a firefox extension so we have more flexibility about downloading guide data
- Start parsing the XML instead of the HTML to make the functions work better (no more confusing apostrophe problems.)

Future features beyond that are pie in the sky until I get the time to make these happen.

Thanks go to Bob for digging in to the HTML parsing problem back when I was completely unavailable, and to the other Doug (berkland) for doing the pause features. The only thing I did here was integrate their work together.

I'm using PoopMagic 0.10 with IVSm 1.0.0.0 - all the progress displays work great. I can't believe I've been using IVSm this long and didn't try the script until the last couple of weeks.

One question - I tried to send a show today and was excited to see that the PoopMagic script apparently lets me initiate the IVSm send right from Poopli. BUT - none of my shows appeared in the drop down menu, so I had to do this the manual way.

Our service guarantee at PoopMagic Industries: Support requests handled within 90 days, or your money back!

Sorry for not noticing the question sooner.

Usually this results from the cache of show listings being incomplete. I believe this happens when the script is trying to download a show and then the web page changes, which can either be because you clicked a link OR it can happen automatically, for example if you go to www.poopli.com, it tries to download the show list, and poopli redirects you to www.poopli.com/.../mainServlet or something.

It's annoying, but for now the fix is to do this:
-Go to the poopli page, wait until it's showing a page like the requests page and it's obviously done bouncing you around from page to page.
-Open a new window/tab, and go to "about:config"
-Type in "poopli" in the "Filter" box.
-Find greasemonkey.scriptvals.http://poopliivsmagic.sourceforge.net//Poopli IVSMagic.CHANNEL_LIST_TIMESTAMP
double click it, and enter "0".
- Do the same thing for
greasemonkey.scriptvals.http://poopliivsmagic.sourceforge.net//Poopli IVSMagic.REPLAY_LIST_TIMESTAMP
(set it to 0 as well)
- Go back to the tab/window with poopli in it, and hit refresh. Then, do not click anything in poopli for a while. You can go back to the about:config tab/window and see when those fields get updated, when they both get a huge 10 digit number in them then you are safe.

Sorry it's such a pain, we need to add a button to the control panel to allow you to do this automatically.

Once you've done this, your shows should be listed. If not, let me know and I'll try to answer in less than 60 days this time.

I have been using the Greasemonkey script for a long time. Suddenly in the past 2-3 days I am experiencing the same problem schwartzcentral descibed above. The list of shows will not display when trying to use the script to send a show.

I have used the method douglips detailed above to clear the cache but the CHANNEL_LIST_TIMESTAMP just stays at 0, never gets a new value. When I clear the two Strings to 0 and then refresh the Poopli page, I watch the REPLAY_LIST_TIMESTAMP get a new value in just a couple of seconds but the CHANNEL_LIST_TIMESTAMP stays at 0 no matter how long I wait.

I have repeated the process many times, rebooted my Replays, my PC, the IVSmagic/WiRNS server PC and the Buffalo routers. This is now on it's third day of no CHANNEL_LIST_TIMESTAMP and I am not sure what else to try to resolve the problem.

<update> 24 hours later and the CHANNEL_LIST_TIMESTAMP is still 0. Anyone have an idea what would cause this and how to fix it?

Jeez, I'm sorry you've been having problems with this. The only thing I can think of (and something I've experienced) which causes the channel list to never update is if the IVSmagic server somehow lost track of all your shows. I had this happen when I had some network problems and the IVSmagic server couldn't talk to my replays. Everything looked fine, but there were no shows and I got this problem on the poopli progress information.

When I went directly to IVSmagic, it told me that my replays were unreachable and I was able to figure it out, but since you've rebooted it's probably not that.

Do you see the list of replays and shows like you expect on the IVSmagic page?

This is because IVSmagic doesn't provide an XML interface to the Download Queue, as it does for Send/Receive progress pages.

Right?

tia...

I don't think it provides the download XML, but if it does, we haven't added it to the poopli+ivsmagic script. There are a lot of things I'd like to do with this script, but I just have no time right now. Real life has intervened.

Well, after several days, I may have found the problem. The replays were working fine and IVSmagic was listing my recorded shows correctly. But I was checking the settings on one of my replays and went into the Network settings option. It told me that my channel guide provider had changed and I needed to select a new one. My provider had not changed as I was using WiRNS, but maybe it was because WiRNS was not using Zap2It any more. Anyway, after setting WiRNS as my channel provider, I started getting the Last Net Connect times displayed.

New TESTING version up which a) should fix the show list problem and b) has a way to one-click refresh the show list by hand if it is screwed up. This is a link you can click which automates that "about:config" thingie.

In addition, there is a feature from berkland having to do with show name matching, should be more tolerant of punctuation than it has been (anything with an apostrophe or ampersand has always been trouble.)

While I was working on it I realized there were some bugs in the old way so it was possible for the channel guide to get screwed up even if the web page loading was not interrupted. The new mechanism makes sure that all the data is downloaded before the next step is taken.

You can try this new testing version here:
[12/2007: LINK REMOVED - this was a testing version, get the release version at the main website - see below post or go to http://poopliivsmagic.sourceforge.net/ and click download]
NOT at the usual download site, this is not an official release

If some folks try it and it doesn't blow up, I'll call it version 0.11. It might also need some minor tweaks before it becomes 0.11.

Here's what it looks like:

If the show list is wrong, you can click 'Refresh Show List". If you do or if the show data is over 24 hours old, the window will come up this way:

After all the data is loaded from IVSMagic, you'll get back to the window again and the show list will be complete.

Anyone feeling brave enough to try it?

Last edited by douglips on Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Just installed it. Very nice, tried the Refresh Show List and it appeared to work as you described. Now I am waiting to see a show request I can fill and test the sending capability.

Thanks Douglips!

UPDATE: I also installed the script on my laptop which I have not used in a few weeks. As soon as I clicked on a Poopli request the script opend with the new screen saying "Reloading Show Lists...". Very cool!

The only thing I can think of that should be added is a way to abort to manual send. If your IVSmagic is down and you want to send manually, you could be stuck looking at that screen for a while.

I'll have to think about how I could do this, but the idea would be to add a "switch to Send Manually" link to that "Reloading Show Lists" window, and then if you switch back to "Send via IVSMagic" it will know if it's done and put you back in the Reloading Show Lists screen if it's still waiting.

Features new since last release:
- Show list updating is handled better, and now you can manually reload the show list from within the "Send Show" window. This fixes the missing shows bug that you used to have to fix in "about:config"
- New "Near Match" feature will suggest a show if it partially matches, so for example "Bones" and "Bones(HD)" will match by default. However, this also means that "Bones" and "Boneyard" will match, so use with caution. You can turn this off or adjust it in the settings window. The "Threshold" is a number between 1 and 10000, where 10000 is an exact match. 5000 would mean that half of the letters must match up.

Features new since last "test" release:
- Adjusting the near-match option in the settings window
- a way to get out of the "Reloading show list" screen ("Stop Waiting")

At this point, the window just sits there - I never get taken back to the request window with the dropdown populated with my shows. Or at least it seems like never - am I just too impatient? I have 84 shows on my replay. How long should it take to load 84 shows at typical cable modem speeds?

That's weird. Once it says "2/2 received" it should instantly go away and give you back the main window. If you then do "stop waiting" does your list have the right values in it?

If not, there might be something stalling it that I can't think of.

Before I give you huge debugging instructions, let me know:
- what version of Firefox you have (do Help->About on the menu bar)
- what version of Greasemonkey you have (do Tools->Add ons on the menu bar, look for Greasemonkey)
- Confirm you downloaded the "release 0.11" and not the "testing" version of this script - you can tell the difference in the "Reloading show lists" screen - you should see a "Stop Waiting" link. Or, in the source code it should say "release 0.11" near the top, like line 10.

Don't know if you need to know this, but I don't use WiRNS. I have one ReplayTV unit. The 2/2 is because there is a local guide set up (but I think empty, or maybe 1 or 2 shows) on the machine running IVSMagic.

Hmmm - in IVSmagic, check that you can click on the link for the local guide and the replay, and that it shows you all the right stuff (even if it's empty for the local guide.)

Do you have any shows with weird names, like it has a funky symbol or japanese letters or something? Anything obviously "weird"?

Oh, I just thought of something - I could try to use your IVSmagic connection on my computer, if you want to trust me and if you have your IVSmagic web page exposed to the universe. If so, PM me your IP address (or hostname) and if you have a password, you could change it to something you trust to give me. If this isn't something you're comfortable with, I totally understand. What I would do with this is just inspect your IVSmagic data, and then try to use the poopli+ivsmagic script to start a show send, just far enough to see if I can track down the problem.

Another thing to try on IVSmagic: Do "purge all guide data" and/or "db maintenance -> rebuild". It will nuke your send/receive and guide data, but it may clear out some funky thing that's in your way right now.

I'll put together some detailed debugging instructions and post them as well...

I also tried rebuilding the IVSm database, got that all reconfigured, did a Poopli update, etc. - same behavior.

I also just noticed something else weird. If I click on a show, get the "reloading show lists" dialog, then click the "stop waiting" link - and from there, click the "refresh show list" link - the dialog comes up again, of course, but this time it goes to 4/2 instead of 2/2!

The good news is that using your IVSmagic server I get the same bad behavior you see- it freezes at 2/2 and never updates the show list (I still see my old show list, so the show list is frozen in time.) This is good news because now I can try to track it down.

The bad news is it's Christmas, and it'll be a few days before I get much further.

I'll let you know what I find out. One thing that makes me wonder is you've got exactly one show in your local guide, so I'm wondering if I have an edge case problem that trips up on that situation.

I'm getting other weird issues now, such as having two different behaviors on two different computers. One one, my entire show list loads OK. On the other one, it never shows shows that are on one of my Replays, even after refreshing. But then the next day it might be OK again.

Something is broken, but I don't have time to play with it much for the next 6-12 weeks.

* The "Refresh Show List" downloaded the new list of shows, but didn't reflect the new list in the available shows list. You had to close and re-open the window to see the correct show list. Fixed, now after Refresh Show List the correct shows will be available immediately.
* There was a possibility for only a subset of your replays to have their shows listed. This was because a bug caused the script to request multiple copies of the show lists - so if one ReplayTV sent it's shows twice, some other ReplayTV would get ignored. Now, only one copy of the show list is requested.

Yeah, I think that happens with shows that don't have a description. This is caused by bad parsing of the HTML.

We were going to solve this by having IVSMagic give XML for such things, but we never made that work. Since it works as it is (it's just ugly) and we have a different idea of how to do it, we never bothered to fix it in the current scheme.